Nagel, physicalism and the being
11
Jul
All modern physicalism, the Greek physis is something else, is essentially reductionist, for “every 
reductionist has his favorite analogy, drawn from modern science” (Nagel, 1974).
Although Nagel does not define what is physical for him, he says verbatim in footnote, he states that “beyond interesting, a phenomenology that is objective in this sense may allow questions about the physical basis of experience to take on a more intelligible form “(Nagel, 1974).
Although Aristotle called the pre-Socratics “physikoi“, this has nothing to do with the modern conception, just as physis can not simply be translated by nature.
Two authors who spoke about this Greek concept, for Jaeger: “the word also includes the original source of things, that from which they develop and by which their development is constantly renewed; in other words, the reality underlying the things of our experience, “while Burnet, in turn, states that” in the Greek philosophical language, physis always designates what is primary, fundamental, and persistent, as opposed to secondary, derivative, and transitional”.
It is these conceptions that most closely approximate Nagel, but it can be said that his concept is almost ontological: “But fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that is to be that organism – something that is to be for the organism. ”
But the important and definitive concept of Nagel is that it may make sense to ask what it is like to be a bat, but it is not conceivable to ask what it is like to be a toaster, physics has limits and if you can go deeper, here about Terrence Deacon’s “Incomplete Nature: the mind emerged to matter”.
Nagel, Thomas (1974). “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”. The Philosophical Review. 83 (4): 435–450.
